The refinery is owned by Esso Petroleum Company Limited, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation, which acquired the site in 1925.

[2] The refinery was established in 1921 by the Atlantic, Gulf and West Indies Oil Company on 270 hectares (670 acres) of land.

[3] The site was chosen because a large amount of land was available for development, and the area was not heavily populated, and because of the position on Southampton Water.

[4] This provided access to the large amount of water used in the refining process, and also made it possible for crude oil to be brought to the site in ocean tankers by sea.

Atlantic, Gulf and West Indies were bought out by British-Mexican Petroleum in 1923, and they, in turn, were taken over by the Anglo-American Oil Company in 1926, which was the British affiliate of Esso.

[3] In 1939 capacity was around 600,000 tonnes of crude oil per annum (approximately 12,000 barrels [1,900 m3] per day) which met just 6.7% of UK demand.

[5] In addition to this, the refinery is also home to the largest refrigerated LPG storage facility in Northern Europe.

[13] A fleet of three tugs, Tenax, Phenix and Apex operated by Solent Towage, is based at the terminal.

Marchwood Power Station was fed by an 11.3 km (7.0 mi) pipeline which delivered oil to four storage tanks holding 26,000 tonnes.

Fawley power station was supplied via two 10 in (25 cm) diameter, 3.2 km (2.0 mi) long, pipelines which discharged into storage tanks with a capacity of 24,000 tonnes.

The feedstock for the plant was butadiene supplied via pipeline from Esso Chemicals and styrene originally obtained from BP Grangemouth refinery.

Union Carbide manufactured anti-freeze, brake fluids, solvents, detergents, and other chemical compounds.

Ethylene was also supplied from Esso Chemicals Fawley to ICI Severnside via a 6 in (15 cm) diameter cross country pipeline.

In 2008 a sailor from Honduras died after a fuel pipe fell from a refinery jib due to a corroded connecting bolt.